Verizon offers $20 credit to those affected by cell phone outage this week

Verizon is offering a $20 credit to customers who could not make or receive phone calls due to Wednesday’s widespread cell service outage.

The carrier announced the compensation for the nationwide service disruption Thursday in a post on the social media platform X.

“To help provide some relief to those affected, we will give you a $20 account credit that can be easily redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app,” the New York City-based company said in the post. “You will receive a text message when the credit is available. On average, this covers multiple days of service. Business customers will be contacted directly about their credits.”

Around 8 p.m. Thursday, just under 500 reports of Verizon cell service outages were reported to Downdetector, a website that tracks disruptions to internet, cellphone and social media service. Around 1 p.m. Wednesday, the site had received more than 175,000 reports from Verizon users in Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Miami, New York City and other major metropolitan areas, Newsday previously reported.

Any users still unable to make telephone calls should restart their cellular device to automatically reconnect to Verizon’s network, the carrier said in its Thursday post.

While the $20 credit does not “make up for what happened,” Verizon said “it’s a way of acknowledging your time and showing that this matters to us.

“We are sorry for what you experienced and will continue to work hard day and night to provide the outstanding network and service that you expect from Verizon,” the company added.